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BurningSkies
CRAZY BALDHEAD
- Feb 20, 2005
- 27,956
- 20,348
- Disclosures
- Endorsing artist: Dingwall Guitars
It's marketing, I don't believe it's brilliant. None of the people here are talking about any of this person's work in a way that suggests anyone will buy one. The billionaire bass players ain't hanging out on TB, and anyone who is willing to splash big bucks on an instrument isn't looking at threads like this for guidance. They've also set the price so ridiculously high that people who would have serious interest in such instruments at their actual 'market value' aren't going to bother with them either.
I honestly don't think they're planning to sell anything at that price. This used to be done on eBay all the time. A place lists a 59 strat for 1,000,00 and people talk about it. They're just trying to create traffic on their shop, I don't believe AT all that the price reflects reality.
Gawd I hope the QC is better!A beautiful instrument for sure, but $1m dollars?Getting close to Gibson prices there!
"The Tree" is the real deal. It's a stunningly blistered, quilted, and/or veined figure, and completely unique for Honduran Mahogany--or any Mahogany. It is more expensive than Brazilian Rosewood and is highly in demand in the acoustic guitar world. The Tree is quite scarce now (so much so that furniture built from it is being resawn into guitar sets) and a raw back and sides set is worth $2,000-$6,000 depending on the quality of the figure.
A 17" one-piece carved back is indeed special, a unicorn among unicorns, and certainly adds a premium. But between that, the labor necessary to build an archtop, and the Ribbecke reputation, I'd price this at $20,000. $30,000 at the absolute extreme. Any collector will know this as well and won't pay the seller's asking prices. There is a reason these instruments have been listed for years now. They must be trying to get a museum to buy them or something. There is a Parker archtop built from The Tree on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; it even has a neck carved from The Tree and that's rare indeed. But I'm sure the Met didn't pay a million for it.
A 17" one-piece carved back is indeed special, a unicorn among unicorns, and certainly adds a premium. But between that, the labor necessary to build an archtop, and the Ribbecke reputation, I'd price this at $20,000. $30,000 at the absolute extreme. Any collector will know this as well and won't pay the seller's asking prices. There is a reason these instruments have been listed for years now. They must be trying to get a museum to buy them or something. There is a Parker archtop built from The Tree on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; it even has a neck carved from The Tree and that's rare indeed. But I'm sure the Met didn't pay a million for it.
The earth looks mostly blue from space...
Holy crap, that's 15 minutes from my house
Agreed, but this is the four elements. It really seems like earth and water are swapped, but maybe that's intentional as well. Something else to talk about.
I think he'd do better if he lowered his price by $34. He needs to be thinking about price points and the psychology behind them. $998,033 seems awfully high to pretty much everyone even though it is a beauty, but hey, you could have a piece of history for only $997,999; that's a real bargain.
